The Hebrew Renaissance

For nearly eighteen centuries Hebrew served to pray and to study, not to tell of daily life. From the 1880s, in Russia and Poland, writers decided to make it a language of the novel and the poem: the vocabulary of the street, of desire, of doubt had to be invented. Bialik became the national poet before there was a state, Brenner wrote the poverty of students through one winter, Agnon carried Hasidic legend into modern prose and would receive the Nobel in 1966. Many emigrated to Palestine, where the language became spoken again.

works 14

• PoetrySelected Poems of Jehudah HaleviשיריםYehuda Halevi · 1130Poems by a Jewish physician and thinker of twelfth-century Spain, about thirty of which turn towards Zion.LiteraturePublic domain
• Theatreלישרים תהילהMoshe Chaim Luzzatto · 1743not translated into EnglishAn allegorical drama in Hebrew from 1743, in which virtues and vices contend for a bride, written for the wedding of a friend of the author.Literature
• Epicשירי תפארתNaphtali Herz Wessely · 1789not translated into EnglishPublished in Berlin from 1789, the epic of the Jewish Enlightenment on Moses and the Exodus, in eighteen cantos and in biblical Hebrew.LiteraturePublic domain
• Poetryכנור נעיםSamuel David Luzzatto · 1825not translated into EnglishA youthful collection by a philologist from Trieste: Hebrew poems written in adolescence, published in Vienna ten years later.Literature
• NovelThe Love of Zionאהבת ציוןAbraham Mapu · 1853Published in Vilna in 1853, the first modern Hebrew novel: thwarted loves in the Jerusalem of Ahaz and Hezekiah, in the time of the prophet Isaiah.LiteraturePublic domain
• Poetryקוצו של יודYehuda Leib Gordon · 1876not translated into EnglishVerse satire published in 1876 in the journal Ha-Shahar: rabbinic authority attacked through the fate of a woman whom the law leaves chained to a missing husband.Literature
• Novelהתועה בדרכי החייםPeretz Smolenskin · 1876not translated into EnglishFirst novel by a writer from the Russian Empire settled in Vienna, first published as a serial in his journal and then collected in a volume: a Jewish life told in the first person and without sparing anyone.Literature
• NovelThe Brief Travels of Benjamin the Thirdקיצור מסעות בנימין השלישיMendele Mocher Sforim · 1878Published in Yiddish in 1878, the Jewish Don Quixote: two naive men from a wretched small town set out to find the Ten Tribes.Literature
• Poetryחזיונות ומנגינותSaul Tchernichovsky · 1898not translated into EnglishFirst collection, published in Warsaw in 1898: a Hebrew poetry that breaks with the sentimental vein of its time.Literature
• PoetryIn the City of Slaughterבעיר ההרגהHayim Nahman Bialik · 1904A poem of 1904 on the Kishinev pogrom: a divine voice leads the poet among the ruins and accuses the victims of passivity.Literature
• NarrativeThe Time BeforeבטרםUri Nissan Gnessin · 1909A novella of 1909, the third in a sequence of four: Hebrew prose here learns to render the course of a consciousness rather than a sequence of events.Literature
• NovelBreakdown and Bereavementשכול וכישלוןYosef Haim Brenner · 1920A novel of 1920, Brenner's last: a broken pioneer in pre-1914 Palestine, between Galilee and Jerusalem.Literature
• PoetryספיחRachel the Poetess · 1927not translated into EnglishRachel's first collection, published in 1927 by the press of the newspaper Davar, four years before her death: short, simple poems, loved from the moment they appeared.LiteraturePublic domain
• NovelA Guest for the Nightאורח נטה ללוןShmuel Yosef Agnon · 1939A novel of 1939: a writer from Jerusalem returns to his native small town in Galicia, ruined by the war, and tries to bring back to life the abandoned place of study.Literature